Spore Gamasultra opinion: Is Spore for everyone?

Gamasultra opinion: Is Spore for everyone?

A new article popped up today on Gamasultra regarding Spore and whether or not it will appeal to everyone. Sure, the game might not be pointed to everyone as it branches away from reality into fantasy, but it shouldnt be disregarded just for that fact alone. There will be entertainment for everybody from the actual gameplay and story-telling to creating creatures, ships, and more.

But the observation that surprised me the most was how people totally unfamiliar with Spore reacted to the very idea of a creature editor. From my perspective, its a brilliantly engineered, elegantly constructed content authoring tool. But from theirs, its an unfamiliar interface to an almost deviant act.

Im used to living in a world drunk on Spore anticipation at any other conference, I would have had to battle my way to the screen. But among the newbies, there was a significant amount of uncertainty and performance anxiety. People werent sure they would be able to build something, even with encouragement and example. One even said, over my shoulder, Im not sure Im creative in that way. I found this reaction fascinating.
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Read Gamasultras article here​

 

LOL ... I was chalking up my observations concerning these sorts of uncertainties posted long ago and those who simply worship Will Wright without regard for the possibility of error assumed I was just being negative and an old poop.

I don't want to see Spore fail. But I am practical enough to see through the obvious appeal of the game (as an experienced and somewhat diehard simmer) to spot the areas where where game will not appeal to other simmers and so fail to sell universally within the simming community. This fact alone is worth further discussion and analysis. The secondary and corrollary point is that is Spore sufficiently robust, both as a conceptual construct and as a game with enough different legs to take its appeal to a wider and differently motivated market than the Simming community.

Part of my rationale for my concern is basedon my experience with a flesh & blood male friend. Mark was the one who introduced me to Sim City back in 1997 on his Win 95 486. I believe the game was an "arr" version; but he soon bought SC 2000 on the strength of his enjoyment with the original.

At the time I owned a Compaq 386 running Win 3.1 which I used mostly for writing. SC 2000 blew me away so much that I bought a new PC capable of running it and bought my own copy. Now here's the dichotomy. Mark loved SC 2000 and was always playing it, but his primary gaming interest was FPS (Doom/Quake mostly) and flight sims. When The Sims emerged, he took one look at it on my PC and yawned hugely ... too girly? I could never get an unequivocal answer from him. Men, eh?

I also bought SC 3000. He didn't. He took a look at the game on my PC and pronounced it "naff". I also arrived at the same conclusion at a later date. Oddly enough, it was his excitement over SC4 which pushed me to go an buy it. He has never asked me about TS2 ... he has a low boredom threshold (and knows how I go on and on and on ... come think of it he has many sim-like characteristics :rotfl, so I don't even consider talking about it to him. I do know he doesn't have it on his PC.

Ask him about Spore though and he'll say that it looks dreadful. A mish-mash of different games (Pacman, Populous, AoE, Sim City, Civilization, Elite are his list) squashed into one boxed set.

Of course none of us can predict the future. As I have said before, I am not anti-Spore. But I worry that these forums are not places of debate where ideas are discussed. More and more it seems to me that UOEM is becoming a place of sycophancy where anyone who says anything which seems less than glowingly fulsome of EA and Will Wright and their products is ignored as a crackpot (or a subversive).

Discussion should be about comparing ideas. People who are all of one accord on a subject are more usually found in a church. Discussion is not about argument; nor is it necessary for resolution to occur. Tedious pedants, like yours truly may well go on to dissect the argument into smaller and smaller pieces ... but that is because of the way I am.

I genuinely feel that whole debate about Spore has barely begun. Regardless of the level of its commercial success, the argument will endure, because -- if no-where else -- the press will continue to probe the game's appeal and seek answers as to why it failed to reach a particular market niche; as well as to wonder at the reasons why it did succeed in whichever areas it does achieve notable success.